Chapter XI: Thorn Meets the Children of the Shell Mounds

Every day Thorn worked for a little while at the chipping of stone axes, but he had plenty of time for play. One morning he ran to the river and jumped on his raft.

"Ha!" he said, "my other self jumped the stream with me. And now it leans over a shadow raft and reaches for a shadow pole."

He looked about him. On the grass lay the long shadows of the trees. In the clear water were the pictured banks.

"Everything has another self," he thought.

As he grew busy with his bow, he heard loud talking, and looked up and saw strange men and children coming along the other bank.

"The men are coming to buy axes," he thought. "The children have come along with them."

The men jumped into the river and swam across and went to the stone yard. But the children came swimming up around the raft like wild ducks. Some of them had long hair that floated about on the water.

"Are you Thorn, the cave boy?" one of them asked him.

"Yes, who are you?"

"I am Clam, a shell mound boy."

Then the children came up around the raft and shook it so that Thorn almost fell off.

"Stop, or I will shoot you!" he cried, laughing.

"Oh, he will shoot us!" cried the children, and they hid behind one another, playing they were afraid.

"Is that your bow?" Clam now asked. "We heard about it. Shoot for us."

"Yes," said Thorn.

He began to paddle to the bank, but the children crowded around the raft and quickly pushed it to shore. Thorn jumped off and began to shoot at the trees. The children went along with him and watched with big eyes. One of the arrows struck a tree and stuck in the bark. The children laughed and ran and pulled it out.

"Do that again!" they cried.

Thorn did it again to shouts and the clapping of hands. Then a boy named Periwinkle threw up a piece of bark and cried, "Hit that!"

Thorn tried over and over again, but he could not. At last he grew tired of shooting. Then the children crowded round him, and Clam said, "Come home with us. Show your bow to the other children."

"How can I get there?" Thorn asked.

"Swim across the river, then walk."

"I cannot swim."

The children laughed and thought that very strange, but Periwinkle said, "Well, we will push you on the raft."

"Yes, yes!" cried the other children.

So Thorn told his grandfather that he was going home with the shell mound people. And when the men had bought their axes, the children all ran down to the river together.

Some of the boys quickly tied a wild grape vine to the raft. Then they cried, "Here we go!" and dived into the river and swam away, pulling the raft. Laughing and shouting and splashing, the others jumped in and followed. They came up alongside the raft and pushed it with one hand and swam with the other.

Before long, all the children on one side of the raft shouted and waved their arms and dived. They came up on the other side of the raft. Then the rest of the children dived and came up far ahead of the raft. Thorn looked on in wonder. As they came near the other bank, the girls pulled up the yellow water lilies and tied them in their wet hair.

The children walked along beside the river for a while. Hippopotamuses lay floating in the water, asleep in the sun. The children gave a great shout and woke up the river horses, as they called them. The animals opened their big mouths;--and the snorts, grunts, yawns! Thorn had never heard anything like it.

"What big teeth they have," he said.

"Yes, and just to eat grass," said another boy.

And soon some of the great rough things dived and came up with their mouths full of reeds.

A little farther along, Thorn saw beavers at work on the bank. They were carrying birch branches down to their homes beneath the little round mounds. And once in a while a water rat or snake swam across the river. Farther on, a flock of white swans floated. Their wings were raised a little, and their shadows floated with them.

The children stopped to watch them.

"Pretty!" they said. "Swans and shadow swans!"

So laughing and playing and seeing strange and beautiful things, Thorn walked a long way with the children. At last, far off, he saw a long purple line.

"That is the sea," Periwinkle told him.

When they came to it, there was a big blue water with no shore on the other side. It was beautiful, and Thorn shouted as he saw the foam-capped waves roll in and break on the white sand.

Pointing to a place along the shore, the children said, "There is our home."